New novels delve into actions of ordinary Germans during the war

We Germans, by Alexander Starritt, and The Vanishing Sky, by L Annette Binder prompt questions about how ordinary Germans acquiesced with the Nazi regime.

A German soldier after a rocket attack on the Moscow front; beside him lies a comrade’s corpse. In ‘We Germans’, by Alexander Starritt, a German soldier writes a letter about his time at war. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty

Psychological experiments demonstrating the bystander effect come to mind when reading these two novels, We Germans, by Alexander Starritt, and The Vanishing Sky, by L Annette Binder, which grapple with the participation of ‘ordinary’ German people in the Nazi system during the Second World War.

In the classic, frequently referenced ‘bystander effect’ experiment of the 1960s, a subject was asked to fill out a form, but then smoke was pumped under the door.